Given the enormous number of father and son duo's that have starred in various major league sports, not to mention brothers and cousins (the mannings anyone?) the heritability of athletic ability is in no doubt I think even by the general public. After all height is obviously genetic in it's basis, and that is a factor in athletic ability to.

In response to YRF's question The 23% of those whe checked unafiliated but attended service weekly - it is not unusual for various christians who go are part of 'small sects' to tick off unaffiliated, beacause they are not affiliated with the Catholic Church. This is most common in areas where the largest organized religion is Catholocism. I live in South Louisiana, and most Christians who are not Catholic will tell you that they are non affiliated Christians. If not given that choice on a survey, they will tick off non affiliated, because they do NOT want to be mistaken for Catholics. Most people (again in this area) who say they are christians are actually saying that they are catholic because many of them view non catholic chrisians as 'not really christians'

I wonder how many of these debts and failures were connected to the U.S. Civil war? It seems that this would likely be the case for most of the Southern states on the list - running up a debt, then being defeated in war and occupied would be a sure fire way to run up a major debt to a foreign nation and then be unable to pay it. Did the U.S. federal government involve itself in any of the cases of state default?

steal them from outgroups or emigrate 
 
It may not be done exactly this way, but are you aware of the vast number of American men in military service who in WWII, the occupation afterwards or the Korean war wound up with wives from Germany or Japan or other nations in the area? It's a pretty substantial # based solely on anecdotal evidence. Another large group are people who fled to the U.S. due to persecution during the war. Of course this includes many Jews (a group that by and large was well educated and entrepeneurial), but it also includes a large # of Eastern Europeans who were fleeing both the Nazis and the Soviets. This latter group was mostly composed of wealthier individuals or those with high levels of skill who feared (correctly as it turned out) that they would not benefit from Soviet rule.

bioIgnoramus - are you aware that the species of trees in Eastern North America and Western Europe are very similar? Yes, the stumps/areas below the girdled section will put out new shoots and keep growing. That doesn't stop the sections above that from dying though. And as both I and pconroy have mentioned it is a lot of work. It probably is easier to take land from somebody else if that is a reasonable option. If there is enough cleared land to grow food for everybody already present, then the labor involved in clearing more land may not be worth while. However if population growth or competition for status, or the development of a taxation scheme makes it attractive to clear the land, then it is certainly capable of being done.

I have used pconroy's method to. It only works easily for smaller trees though. For really large trees like many of those in a virgin hardwood forest it doesn't work well. However it's great for knocking off the smaller trees in the area. It can work for somewhat larger trees if you have some patience - dig around the base of the tree and sever the roots that are growing outward and serve to stabilize the tree. Try to pull it over (with a tractor in modern times, with some oxen or neighbors in ancient times) If it won't pull over, wait until after some really heavy rains soften the ground and try it again.

Exactly - I agree with John J Emerson - the process can be seen even today in the 3rd world where people progressively clear areas out looking for firewood. Also, as noted the lack of axes and steel tools isn't a terrible problem. You can kill large trees pretty effectively by girdling them - cutting the bark and outer layer of wood - all around near the base. After that wait for the tree to die and dry out. It was used at times in North America where trees were to large to easily cut with axes, or when manpower available for that task was insufficient. After the tree is dead and dried it is much more brittle and can be pulled over more easily by cutting it with an axe and pulling it over with animal power. Another alternative is to girdle all the trees in an area at the same time, wait for them to die and dry and then burn them down (although you cannot then use the wood for other purposes) These are long term projects, but not beyond the scope of an individual farmer or small community - girdle a few trees each year, and then fell the trees you girdled 2 years ago at the same time. After you fell the trees, burn the stumps out. burning stumps out is pretty basic stuff - I do it at home. If it's to damp for you to burn the stump out, then it will decay from mold and fungus in a few years, and then you can pull it apart with your bare hands.

I also thought along the lines of pconroy. If the Ankole are good beef cattle they should be improved following those lines. I live in South Louisiana and the most popular beef cattle breed here is the Brangus - a cross between Angus (tasty) and Brahma (good resistance to heat and tropical diseases) Perhaps the Ankole is another candidate for introducing heat and tropical disease resistance to standard beef cattle.  
 
The real problem in Uganda isn't that there is cross breeding occuring, but that most of it is being done helter skelter rather than with any particular objectives in mind. It's likely that it will produce no positive results, or at least not the positive results that could be produced by a directed breeding program.

I think if a very large # of Holsteins is suddenly introduced to a smaller population of Ankole, or the Holsteins are selectively bred more aggressively than the Ankole that there are three risks: 
 
In a fairly short period of time nobody will remember what the good characterstics of the Ankole were - even if the genetics are still hidden in Holstein looking cows, nobody will look for them. 
 
It's possible for the potentially positive Ankole characteristics to be the result of a group of genes working in concert - which would be broken apart by crossbreeding 
 
It's possible that the beneficial genes get so widely dispersed among a large # of Holstein genes that they cannot reasonably be found even if people start to look for them later on.